Male Smokers Run Risk of Losing Their Y Chromosomes

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Smoking can actually delete a sex chromosome that determines gender and affects fertility.

Cigarettes
make you look sexy, right? Wrong. It turns out that smoking tobacco can cause
men to lose their Y chromosomes, which could mean lower sperm counts.

New
research from Sweden published in the journal Science only adds to the huge pile
of data stacked up against tobacco smoking. It shows that men who smoke are more
than three times as likely to lose their Y chromosomes as nonsmokers.

Swedish
researchers say that the loss of Y chromosomes may help explain why men are
more likely to develop certain cancers associated with smoking than women.

“The strength of association between smoking
and this mutation was a surprise,” said study co-author Jan Dumanski, Ph.D., a
professor in the department of immunology, genetics, and pathology at Uppsala
University in Sweden.

Smoking is simply more dangerous for men. This finding may in part explain why men in general have a shorter life span than women.

Jan Dumanski, Ph.D., Uppsala University

Y chromosomes are one of two types of sex
chromosomes and they are found only in men. Y chromosomes are what make men
men, and they affect things like the development of the testicles. Over
evolutionary time, the Y chromosome has shed many of its genes, but the ones that remain are vital
and are expressed in tissues throughout the body, not just the reproductive
system.

Dumanski and his team analyzed data on more
than 6,000 men, taking into account their age, exercise habits, cholesterol levels,
education, alcohol intake, lifestyle behaviors, smoking habits, and more.

The researchers found that the Y chromosome is
three times more likely to disappear from the blood cells of current smokers
compared to men who have never smoked or who have kicked the habit.

“Results indicate that …
this process is reversible,” Dumanski said. That means if you’re having
fertility troubles and you’ve found solace in cigarettes, it’s time to quit.

“We found that the
frequency of cells with loss of the Y chromosome was not different among
ex-smokers compared to men who had never smoked,” Dumanski said.

The
extent of Y chromosome loss seems to be dose-dependent, meaning that the more
you smoke the more likely you are to lose your sex chromosome.

“This discovery is very
important for motivating smokers to quit. Smoking is simply more dangerous
for men. This finding may
in part explain why men in general have a shorter life span than women,”
Dumanski said.

There
are numerous campaigns and resources available to teach the
public about the harmful effects of tobacco smoke and to help smokers quit.
However, more research still needs to be done to find out just how tobacco
smoking damages DNA.

“We need to better understand the mechanism
behind smoking being able to induce a large genetic damage, such as loss of an entire
chromosome,” Dumanski said.